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Improvements to the safety of elderly people's homes may be more effective than expensive drugs at preventing bone fractures, researchers have claimed.

Finnish experts suggest that drug treatment for osteoporosis can be expensive and that home safety improvements would be cheaper and may have a bigger impact.

The team, which included the University of Tampere's Dr Teppo Jarvinen, call for a 'change of approach' as many GPs do not assess elderly patients' risk of falling and consider how fractures could be prevented by reducing this risk.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they reveal: 'Numerous studies show that among older people, falling, not osteoporosis, is the strongest risk factor for fracture.'

They conclude: 'It is time to shift the focus in fracture prevention from osteoporosis to falls. Falling is an under-recognised risk factor for fracture, it is preventable, and prevention provides additional health benefits beyond avoiding fractures.'

However, Julia Thompson, a spokeswoman for the National Osteoporosis Society, told the BBC: 'Osteoporosis treatment has to go hand-in-hand with falls prevention to help the hundreds of thousands of people in the UK at risk of breaking a bone.'